Tag: Alfred Hitchcock Presents Stores That Scared Even Me

What About Me

Well, here we are on Monday morning after my surgery, and I’m not really sure what I’ll be doing today. I really need to pick up a prescription in Uptown, and we need to pick up the mail at some point, but I’m not really sure how I’m going to do that. I don’t know that I should risk driving yet, because New Orleans drivers are so horrible, but it has to be done and I need the prescription. I suppose I could take a ride service, but I hate spending the money as well. I guess I don’t have a choice though, so I’ll deal with that later. I also need to make groceries.

We had had an issue a few weeks ago with the apartment. They were doing some work on the patio deck above my kitchen, and unfortunately there was rotten wood up there. The ceiling kind of gave way; they ended up nailing up a piece of plywood over the hole in the ceiling. Unfortunately the next time it rained, of course, it leaked , but they finished the work up there and never came back to repair our ceiling. We had a massive thunderstorm Saturday night, and so i woke up Sunday morning to water on the floor in the kitchen, on the stove, and on the counter. The carpets in the kitchen were also  wet; so I got out towels and a bucket for the dripping and hoped that the ceiling wouldn’t cave in. About two hours later, yeah, some of the plaster came down with a loud, startling crash, and so now there’s another hole in the ceiling. The insulation up there is soaked, so I had to leave the bucket for the dripping to continue. Needless to say, this is a really shitty time for this to happen and it spiraled me into a really bad depressive state yesterday. I have noted already that my emotions have been all over the place since the surgery — so something like this really sent me into a spiral. The anxiety really ramps up, so yeah, yesterday was just not a good day for me.

So, I repaired my easy chair with a Gatorade and Nurse Sparky and put on one of my comfort movies, Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. I’ve always loved Indiana Jones, but I haven’t seen the most recent movie yet. I’ve always wanted to write an Indiana  Jones type book; I love historical treasure  hunts and have always thought that it would be fun to write those kind of stories with Colin as the main character — away from Frank and Scotty, to kind of fill in the blanks when he’s away from New Orleans. I have an idea that’s tied into the 4th crusade and the sack of Constantinople; a treasure hidden away in the Hagia Sophia since the Nicaean Council that established the dogma of Catholic Christianity. The Orthodox patriarchy had been keeping this treasure secret from the Pope and the Vatican for centuries, at least since the schism of 1052. My idea is that the Venetians and the Crusaders knew that the Pope would be furious to learn they had sacked Constantinople, but the Doge, Enrico Dandalo, not only knew about the secret but also knew presenting it to the Pope would get them forgiven. The primary problem with this is that I have never figured out what precisely was hidden in the Hagia Sophia; but I wanted to tie it into the Assassins and the Old Man of the Mountain. I thought that would make for a fun adventure, particularly setting it in a fictional Middle Eastern country. However, with everything that’s going on in the world nowadays, writing about the Middle East is probably not a good idea at this point.

I also read a lot of short stories over the weekend. I read all the stories in one of my Alfred Hitchcock Presents anthologies, Stories That Scared Even Me, and that was a lot of fun. The book was published originally in the 1960s or early 1970s and it is amazing how much attitudes in society and cultural attitudes have changed since that time. The contributors were almost entirely male — all of these anthologies are underrepresented with women — and there are a lot of really racist and patriarchal  tropes in some of the stories. Several, for example, are set in Mexico; I’ll let your imagination do the rest rather than quote what they said so casually. I’m also writing a story set in Central America — I was writing it to submit to a horror anthology — and it was one that I had started writing back in the 1990s, I believe. I was kind of horrified by what I wrote — I feel like by the 1980s I should have known better about these kinds of tropes  — but the story is salvageable; with some strong changes and a fictional country. But you can still get into trouble, even with that, and the last thing I ever want to do is write something problematic that will offend people. (I have already mentioned the story that I submitted to a anthology that’s not going to happen now about the South, which I recently  reread and was horrified by.)  A lot of these stories have those twisty type of endings that I always loved; that little hint of irony that really made the story sing. I always try to give my stories those kinds of endings because that’s what I grew up reading as far as short stories are concerned, and I often have to struggle to not try that with every story, because it’s not right for every story and I have a bad tendency to try to force things to work the way I want them to, instead of the way that they should work organically.

Dictating is much slower than typing, as I’ve noted before; this is taking me a lot longer to dictate then I would like. Where I actually typing this entry, I would probably already be finished by now. But you do what you have to do. I also started dictating my next book, figuring it’s better to get started on it while I’m at home recovering from the surgery, rather than waiting until such time as my left hand can be used for the keyboard. I’m still not having any pain  — my primary issue is mobility, not being able to use my left hand for  much, occasional nausea from the antibiotic, and the mood swings and depression. I wish I had already started on my anti-anxiety medication protocol before the surgery, but what can you do? Yesterday morning, I was thinking that I made a lot of bad decisions about this surgery and that I didn’t do it knowing everything that would result from it; but I was worried about not ever being able to go to the gym and workout again unless  and until this was done, and pushing it back to next year wouldn’t have changed any of these issues, I don’t think, other than possibly better planning on my part. But that’s also part of the anxiety—I always question my decisions, and never really believe that I made the right choices afterward. I guess it is just a part of that hindsight being 20/20 thing that always drives me crazy. I never really am confident in the decisions I make, so I always try to not second-guess or doubt myself afterward; there’s no point in rehashing things that you can’t change. Why obsess over something I have no control over anymore? That’s the easiest way to drive yourself crazy, I think.

We’re also really enjoying the show Bodies on Netflix. It has everything that I like; a bit of science fiction, crime, surprise twists, and gay content. You can never go wrong with me when you have gay content. (That’s not entirely true; there are some really terrible shows in movies with gay content that are basically unwatchable) I also finished watching a Jane Seymour series on Acorn called Harry Wild, which wasn’t great but was entertaining enough. I don’t know what all I’ve been watching to be honest with you, Constant Reader, but I’ve been watching  an awful lot of television.

I did watch a terrible adaptation of Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d, and the less said about that the better.

I’m hoping today or tomorrow to be able to read a novel; I’m really enjoying the one that I was reading before the surgery and would like to finish it, but my mind is all over the place and has been since coming home from the surgery. I haven’t even been able to focus on the TV I’ve been watching as much as I would like. Part of it is the depression, part of it is the holiday without Mom, and of course, the surgery. You see how I am? I’m being hard on myself after a major surgery for not getting anything done or being productive. Heavy sigh. Welcome to the wonderful world of what goes on inside my head.

And on that note, I am going to bring this to a close and see if I can figure out what I’m going to do for the rest of the day, and what I can do about these errands. I hope you have a lovely Monday and as always, thank you for checking in and thank you for reading.

Dirty Laundry

Tuesday and soon enough I’ll be heading out to the dentist for my final fitting of the dentures–which means the next time I go, I will actually get them and be off this hateful soft food diet once and for all. I’ve kind of gotten used to it, though–but as much as I will miss the pint of ice cream, I can still have yogurt and the super-hot-and-spicy ramen on top of everything else. I think I am going to give myself to the end of the year–since I missed out on so much unhealthy food since the surgery–before I change my eating habits in order to be healthier going forward. The New Year will also be about six weeks after the surgery, so hopefully I’ll be in better condition by then to actually go ahead and change the way both Paul and I eat–Paul already eats much healthier than I do; so I just need to adjust mine a bit. But I can cut the ice cream out, as well as some of the snacking. Popcorn is really healthier, and it’s not hard to make, either. And I like it, just as I like pretzels, which are also healthier than chips (I think). At any rate, I need to spend some more time in the kitchen figuring out how to cook things I’ll like that are good for me.

And every once in a while, I can make Swedish meatballs or shrimp-n-grits as a treat…

Yes, because looking at food as a potential reward/treat is completely the healthy mindset I should have.

I’ve always had issues with my body and with food, for that matter; a lot of it stupid, a lot of it a product of my malfunctioning brain, and part of it from being, well, shamed for not being in the best physical condition possible. I don’t know when it all started, but I know when I was in high school–when I really started paying attention to male bodies–that I wasn’t built like other boys, and certainly not the ones all the girls were madly crushing on (for the record, I have never, nor will I ever, understand straight women’s taste in men), so I began thinking there must be something wrong with my body. I did eventually stop doing sports and so forth once I was in college, and that was also right around the time my metabolism slowed down from what it had been previously, so I gained weight–and I’ve never really been right in the head about my body and weight management ever since, I’m over sixty now, of course, and a lot of that body image stuff is in the past–but I do sometimes see pictures of myself and cringe at how big I look, which is patently absurd on its face and a mentality I need to get rid of once and for all. This soft food diet has helped me drop some extra weight–about ten pounds or so at this point–and I bet I lose even more after the surgery. Note to self: you need to buy a wagon to carry groceries in from the car, since you won’t have the use of both arms for a while.

It’s below sixty this morning and we’re having a middle of the week cold snap, even getting colder than fifty theoretically tonight. It’s also supposed to rain throughout the day. I am off to the dentist in a little while, so it’s one of those wretched days when I have to run all over town throughout the day, which is fine. I woke up this morning at five–and of course, Tug did his usual morning leap over Paul onto me and curled up on my pillow at around five-forty-five, waiting for the alarm so I would get up and feed him. He really is adorable, and loves to play like all kittens do; I need to buy him some toys, is what I need to do, and several laser lights because he got hold of the original one I bought and it’s disappeared, probably either under the couch or behind something. Maybe I should either swing by Petco or order something from their website to be delivered. I think he’d love one of those birds on a stick things; he was playing fetch with one of Scooter’s mice last night. But he’s adapted completely now to being our indoor cat, and he definitely feels like he is King of the Castle. He’s also curious about everything and still fearless, climbing under the couch or the dishwasher or wherever he can get–and he loves getting into the cabinets. He also broke my lunchbox yesterday; he knocked it off the counter after I packed it, and the clip for the shoulder strap broke. Sigh. I had to order another one.

I also got some book mail yesterday: Adam Cesare’s Clown in a Cornfield 2: Frendo Lives and Lisa Unger’s Christmas Presents. Lisa Unger is one of my favorite writers, but is one of those I always forget to mention when people ask me about favorite authors in interviews and things. I read some more short stories from Alfred Hitchcock Presents Stories That Scared Even Me, and they were okay; more morbid and weird than anything else, but interesting. One was “It” by Theodore Sturgeon, which was very peculiar and strange but was kind of fun to read (even though a dog dies terribly in it) and “Casablanca” by Thomas M. Disch, which was interesting; about an American couple visiting Morocco when a nuclear war breaks out between the Soviet Union and the United States, and how things change for them during that period, as they slowly lose their ugly American haughtiness and privilege. It was difficult to feel sorry for them because they were so awful and so used to their being American being a magic ticket that they become nasty and unpleasant as they begin to realize that being American means nothing anymore. It was kind of haunting to remember that paranoia we were so used to living with when I was a child; that fear that at any moment bombs would be incoming that would change the world forever; the American cultural obsession with nuclear doomsday when I was growing up was really something and popped up in movies and books and stories all the time. The one I remember the most (literature wise) is Alas Babylon, and the movies–Testament and The Day After. When I was in high school PBS ran a documentary about the possibility of nuclear war and what it would like; which was when I learned nuclear missile bases dotted the Midwest and particularly Kansas–the abandoned missile base just outside of Bushong in north Lyon County was actually mentioned in the show as a target despite being abandoned in the early 1970’s (that missile base shows up in my story “This Thing of Darkness,” and sometimes I think it might be fun to set an entire book there–high school kids exploring an abandoned missile base only to find something horrible and deadly there), which was all we could talk about at school that week–the morbid fascination that out there in the middle of nowhere Kansas we were still Soviet targets.

Ah growing up in the second half of the twentieth century was such a joy.

And on that note, I am going to get showered and cleaned up and head for the dentist’s office. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again later.

Blue Bayou

Sunday morning and all is well in the Lost Apartment. Yesterday was kind of nice. I slept well again on Friday night, woke up at five, six and seven like every morning with no alarm, and then finally got up around seven thirty to get ready for the day, which was nice. I decided that it made the most sense to run my errands in the morning before the brutal heat of the afternoon; I needed to mail a letter and pick up the mail, as well as drop off Scooter’s leftover food at the Cat Practice and make groceries–and I needed cleaning supplies, so that was crucial to the day; an errand that had to be run. It was brutally hot, but I managed it all. I bought a lot of cleaning supplies, and spent most of the afternoon yesterday cleaning. I did the stairs, the floors in the bedroom, and finally emptied and cleaned out Scooter’s litter box. I was avoiding it because I was afraid doing it would make me sad, but ironically it was just a chore…but writing about it just now made me start to tear up a bit. Sigh. He was such a dear cat. (I also looked at the adoptable cats on the SPCA’s website. I really really want to get this twelve year old ginger boy that no one’s going to want because he’s old..but we’re old. Is it fair to get a baby cat that might outlive either or both of us? Well, that certainly cheered me up a bit. Christ.)

I also did the baseboards and the CD stand…which is something we’re going to have to discuss. We don’t even have a CD player anymore, and yes, it’s terrible to have paid for all that music only to lose it now all these years later but…I haven’t listened to a CD in years. My car has a CD player–maybe I can move some into the car and listen to them instead of the phone? We have all these great gay deejay dance mix CD’s–we used to buy them all the time, the little store across from the Pub used to sell them, and Tower Records–when it existed still–also sold dance remix CDs; I think I got the Debbie Harry dance mix CD single for “I Want That Man” at Tower Records. Anyway, years and years ago Paul had this wooden CD stand custom built. It’s a lovely piece of furniture, and perhaps it can be repurposed for something else–but the CDs are grimy and I cleaned them with a lick and a promise; but…do we really need to hold on to all those CDs? (The stand needs to be repainted white, too–years of nicotine have turned it precancerous–but that will have to wait until the weather calms the fuck down.

But I feel good about the apartment, really. Having the walls finally finished has awakened a nesting instinct in me that’s been dormant for quite some time. As I was finishing the stairs and looking around, I actually thought I wouldn’t mind having someone come by the house now even though it’s still not up to my standard (my work space will never stay tamed, alas), which is something I’ve not even considered in years. It felt good wiping down the walls and baseboards, picking up all that nasty dust and getting rid of it. I also bought a dust mop at the store yesterday (as one of my cleaning purchases) so I can run it over the walls more regularly to keep the dust from accumulating and turning into grime or cobwebs. It’s still very much a work in progress, of course, but I am feeling good about the homestead, and probably am about to do another brutal purge of the books.

I read some short stories yesterday as well–more of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents anthology stories, of course–and I am getting such an education in short stories, as well as having some powerful insights (well, to me anyway; remember, I go through life completely oblivious to everything) about my own stories, what I find myself afraid to do and how limiting my own fears about my abilities and my talents and my creativity have proven to be. One of the stories I read yesterday, “Getting Rid of George” by Robert Arthur, was about a movie star whose carefully hidden past suddenly comes back with a vengeance just as she is about to marry the love of her life and start her own production company with him, making herself quite rich in the process, and it hit me: one of the stories I am struggling with writing right now is about a wealthy gay man and his boy toy looking for a fabled ‘fountain of youth’ in a fictional Latin American country. I’ve had the idea for decades–since visiting the Mayan ruins in the Yucatan and thinking I should write a story about these ruins (and yes, well aware that I have to be incredibly careful and respectful of the Mayan culture and their descendants)…and this is the story set in a foreign locale I was going to try to write for the Malice anthology. I need to recognize self-destructive thinking when it presents myself; and whenever I think you can’t write this for whatever reason my reaction shouldn’t be to shy away from it but to dive into it headfirst and commit to it. (This is also one of those stories that I thought I had already written a draft of; but it is not to be found anywhere, nothing other than pieces of aborted openings–it may have been lost in the Great Data Disaster of 2018….but I just realized where it probably was and THAT’S WHERE IT WAS! Victory!)

And really, one of the two main characters in my story “Don’t Look Down” was a retired former boy band star. So, that was certainly outside my expertise, was it not?

I really enjoyed the Robert Arthur story; Arthur was also the creator of, and wrote, eleven of the first twelve Three Investigators mystery series, which makes him always special to me. He worked for Hitchcock on the literary side of the brand (Hitchcock became a brand like before we thought of creatives in terms of brands and branding and brand marketing), and also “helped” (i.e. “ghost edited”) most of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents anthologies. Arthur was a great writer, “Getting Rid of George” certainly is evidence of his talents, and it’s a shame he isn’t better known or regarded; but the great tragedy of juvenile books is that they rarely survive the test of time–they inevitably are forgotten, as are their authors, unless they win a Newbery medal or something, like Johnny Tremain, but I suspect even that tired old war horse of American revolutionary propaganda isn’t read nearly as much today as it was when I was a kid. There are few–Lois Duncan being one–crime writers for juveniles or young adults to be named Grand Masters by Mystery Writers of America; Arthur certainly deserved to at least be considered, as the creator of the Three Investigators and as a rather successful writer of crime short stories.

I read another story in My Favorites in Suspense, “Island of Fear” by William Sambrot, which I really enjoyed and thought was quite excellent. An Englishman looking for antiques and local art in the Greek islands spots a small island with a massive wall built along its shoreline, and wants to stop there as it is remote and doesn’t, per the captain, get many outside visitors. This is a “be careful what you wish for” tale; because he convinces the captain to let him off on the island, where he spots a gorgeous sculpture through a break in the wall, so exquisite he has to have it and meet whoever the people are who live in the land inside the wall. The island natives are quiet and don’t talk much–not his usual experience with Greeks–and finally convinces a young man to row him around the island to an opening in the walls so he can go ashore, meet the owners, and buy the statue. As I said, it’s a “be careful what you wish for” story, and the ending is quite satisfying as the last few paragraphs make sense of the “mystery” of the island. It may well have been my favorite of the stories thus far in the anthology (at least of the new-to-me material; remember the book opened with “The Birds” by Daphne du Maurier, which quite set the tone for the rest of the stories.

I also read a story from Stories That Scared Even Me, “Two Spinsters”, which falls into the category of “the unfortunate traveler,” which several stories in both anthologies fall into. It’s not bad, the main character being a police detective who gets lost on unknown backroads and can’t find the town he’s looking for, and is eventually forced to seek refuge at a strange house with two identical, if silent, spinsters–and there’s a lot more going on in that strange house than the weary traveler suspects at first. This story was written by E. Phillips Oppenheim, yet another writer I’ve never heard of or his work before. Oppenheim, however, was quite the big deal in his time; he wrote and published over a hundred novels and even more short stories; John Buchan (a Golden Age crime writer not as well known today as perhaps he should be) called him his primary inspiration when launching his own career in 1913.

Interestingly enough, the next story up in Stories That Scared Even Me is by Robert Arthur. There are only three stories left in My Favorites in Suspense, and the book closes with a short novel, The Blank Wall by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding, a classic from that post-war era that I’ve always wanted to read (it was common in those days to close a short story collection by including a short novel, and most crime novels in those days were rather short). I’ll probably finish reading those short stories today, but really need to get back to reading novels–maybe I’ll read a bit more into The Hunt by Kelly J. Ford, which is fantastic; taking so long to finish should not be seen as an indictment of Ford’s work. The book is fantastic and she is one of the great new voices in queer crime fiction–and I’ll be doing a crime panel with her later today for Outwrite DC.

I slept really well last night–it’s lovely having Paul home, really–and so today I hope to get some reading and writing done. I am about to adjourn to my chair to finish this Hitchcock anthology, and then I am going to work on getting some writing done while cleaning up the kitchen and my workspace. I feel very well rested this morning–I could have easily slept much later–so hopefully it will be a great day of getting things done.

Or not. Since Paul’s home now we can finish watching Gotham Knights, Hijack, and back to other shows we’re watching, and of course Paul needs to watch Season Two of Heartstopper, which means I can finally talk about it. I may check in with you again later, Constant Reader, and if not, I certainly will do so tomorrow.

Let My Love Be Your Pillow

Saturday morning and Paul comes home today! Huzzah! Huzzah! I of course literally have no idea what time he will be arriving–he never tells me these things and I never think to ask–but it’s fine. Yesterday was a good work-at-home day. Sam the handyman came by in the morning to finish touching things up and clean everything up, which was marvelous, and now the apartment sort of looks like our apartment again. It’s great, and it makes me want to clean, which is something I’d forgotten that I enjoyed so much. I’ve really let the housework slide since the pandemic started (sure, let’s blame it on that, shall we?) but a lot of it had to do with the walls in the living room. tl;dr= we had some leaks, and water damage to the walls in the living room. The leaks were repaired, but the plaster and paint somehow never got finished and we’d been living with that for a while….and when you have places where the bare wall is showing…the apartment, even clean and sparkling from ceiling to floor, would look deranged and damaged and sloppy. I think I felt a little defeated, to be honest.

I’ve felt defeated a lot over the last few years, if I’m going to be honest. But I’ve been feeling oddly better lately about things lately, even optimistic at times. I know, right? It’s kind of scary. It’s like I don’t even know who I am anymore, but I have full faith in the universe to deliver yet another blow the way it always does when I start feeling like this again–a sense of contentment and peace. I’m sleeping better, getting better rest, and I am getting things done rather than sitting in my easy chair every night scrolling through social media while Youtube videos stream endlessly on continual play. Ironically, I remember feeling this way on another hot August Friday in New Orleans, two weeks before Hurricane Katrina. I had just finished Mardi Gras Mambo at long last and turned it in, and that Friday I had met with the Admissions office at UNO to see about finishing my degree in English and pursuing a master’s, and even potentially eventually a PhD. Yes, I had ambitions. The meeting had gone incredibly well. We scheduled a meeting with the chair of the English department, and it looked fortuitous and very good; I’d have to pay for the semester required to get the English degree, but it looked like I’d get the master’s not only without having to pay, but I’d also get an on-campus part-time job. I don’t reflect back very often, but sometimes I remember that last optimistic August before Katrina and wonder how different my life would look now had Katrina never happened…or at least had the levees held. I’ve always felt the lack of educational degree and study keenly; I was far too young when I started school and majored in English to really appreciate the in-depth examination of classic literature and other forms. None of what little I learned stuck, either. I have also always been made to feel that the books I actually did read and appreciate were lowbrow; on par for someone as uneducated and unserious like me. I’ve not read much of the classic writers, for example; I’ve never read Edith Wharton or Jane Austen or much of Henry James; I may give Hemingway another try at some point but I was unimpressed with both A Farewell to Arms and The Old Man and the Sea. Fitzgerald wrote beautifully about horrible people I’m not interested in; I love Faulkner but he’s a lot of work to read (but I will go to my grave loving “A Rose for Emily” and wishing I had written one thing that perfect), so I’m not going to read Faulkner for pleasure–even though I take great pleasure in the voice and the rhythm of the words and so forth, I’m still looking for characterization and story.

Hell, there are any number of classic mystery writers I’ve never read, for that matter. I had never read Ross Macdonald until I was on a panel with Christopher Rice who sang his praises highly enough for me to get a couple of his books…and have always been delighted that I did. I think I’ve read one Rex Stout novel, but I can’t remember anything about it and I think I am thinking of a television adaptation with William Conrad and Timothy Hutton? Or did I imagine that, too? One of the things I am loving about reading the short stories in these marvelous old Alfred Hitchcock Presents anthologies is getting to read authors I’ve heard of that I’ve not read. Yesterday night I read “Curious Adventure of Mr. Bond” by Nugent Barker, from Stories That Scared Even Me; “Four O’Clock” by Rice Day, “Of Missing Persons” by Jack Finney, and Paul Eiden’s “Too Many Coincidences”, from My Favorites in Suspense. I enjoyed them all, but the Barker was my least favorite of the four. It’s written in Ye Olde Timey Style, and it goes on for far too long, and it’s big twist I saw coming. I also didn’t much care for Mr. Bond. The Day story was one of those macabre little tales of irony with the kind of ending that Daphne du Maurier mastered and I’ve always loved–and aspire to write. (The trick is the ending has to be earned.) The Finney story was also one of those, but a bit more melancholic than macabre.

I also spent some more time with Superman last night. First I watched a documentary called Look Up In The Sky! The Amazing Story of Superman, which I followed with this week’s episode of My Adventures with Superman. I was very pleased to see Jimmy Olsen talked about in the documentary, and the actor from the television series, Jack Larson, was openly gay and was in a very long term relationship that lasted until he died in 2015, as someone very kindly reminded me on Twitter the other day in response to my talking about Jimmy on here. I am really intrigued at the idea of writing a Jimmy Olsen story…although I’m not exactly sure what I would do with such a thing, and I’m equally sure publishing it would be a trademark/copyright violation of some sort. I’ll make a note and keep chewing on it, though.

I also worked on the book some last night (at last) which felt marvelous and overdue. It was so hot yesterday–even with the air conditioner on full blast and desperately trying to keep up, you could tell inside that everything outside was roasting. I am quite pleased to have gotten past the revision of Chapter Five at long last and I have to say, I am most happy with what I did. Of course, Chapter Six is from scratch, which is going to be an enormous pain in my ass, naturally; writing anything where nothing other than a thought exists at the moment is always harder than revising. Revising can be either tedious or a lot of fun; it’s when your making the book better written and deepening characters and cleaning up shit and building on the ideas you’ve already gotten down but didn’t express particularly well as you were just madly trying to get words on the page and the story advanced and all of that.

Whew. Breathe.

I also woke up to a marvelous email–I just checked–from my editor on Mississippi River Mischief letting me know when the edits would come and included…”This book is fabulous, btw.”

Whew,

And on that marvelous note, off to the spice mines with me!

Heaven’s Just a Sin Away

Monday morning and back to the office with me. I had a lovely weekend, and hope you did as well, Constant Reader. Yesterday morning was enormously productive–perhaps not with writing, but at least with the chores, and yes, I am aware I’ve gone full Joan Crawford since Paul left. I worked on my blog yesterday morning, and then made Greg’s Famous Meatballs in the slow cooker–which takes a while for the prep work slicing the onions and celery and bell pepper for the roux and then making the roux itself; making the meatballs–which involves bread crumbs, egg, and diced onion and various spices–and then preparing the sauce. I was also trying to clean as I went–easier said than done–but I don’t want to let the kitchen slide to the embarrassing mess it was in before Paul left. Maintenance is always easier than the deep clean. Then once the meatballs were safely deposited into the slow cooker along with the sauce (I changed it again), I went to work on cleaning up the mess–as well as cutting up a salad for taking to work this week and then the clean-up for that before I showered and moved on to the living room.

I also took the time to read two more stories from Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories That Scared Even Me, namely, John Burke’s “Party Games” and Fritz Leiber’s “X Marks the Pedspot”, both of which were decidedly creepy and disturbing; the first about an unpopular child who crashes a birthday party he wasn’t invited to and things take a macabre turn; Leiber’s story reminded me of a Harlan Ellison story about duels on the highway between cars; the ultimate expression of road rage. The primary difference between Ellison’s story and Leiber’s was that in the Leiber, it’s a seemingly endless war between drivers and pedestrians, highlighted by the dislike and contempt felt between the suburbanites (the drivers) and the urbanites (the pedestrian city dwellers), and focuses on an incident that leads to another treaty and changes to the rules of engagement. It’s quite macabre and dystopian; I’ve not read Leiber before, but he was an award winning writer of horror, science fiction and fantasy; I have a copy of his novel Conjure Wife (which Bell Book and Candle, and later Bewitched, took some inspiration from) which I’ve always wanted to get around to read. Both stories were well done and unsettling; I don’t know that I would call them “scary,” but I enjoyed both very much. Burke primarily wrote novelizations of films, and a series about Dr. Caspian, and also used numerous pseudonyms. He was an award-winning short story writer, too–and I have to say “Party Games” was creepy as fuck.

It is fun finding these old gems, and seeing how they hold up.

I managed to get quite a bit done yesterday for cleaning, at any rate; no writing to claim for the weekend. But it’s okay to not write every day. It’s okay to not be productive all the time, and I really need to get past the feeling that taking time off is not only wasted (I only have so much time left) but me being lazy. I think my edits for Mississippi River Mischief will be dropping soon, and I kind of needed this weekend. I feel better about the apartment than I have in a long time, and am regretful that I allowed it to lapse into such a disgraceful condition. I’m going to blame depression for letting my standards slip so badly, and it should be relatively easy to maintain now. I feel better, more rested and relaxed, and hopefully that will carry me through the rest of this week. I have a live streaming thing this coming Sunday–Outwrite in DC, I think? I’ll have to find the link to register. John Copenhaver is moderating, and the panelists are me, Kelly J. Ford, Margot Douaihy, Robyn Gigl, and Renee James. John sent us questions yesterday, which I’ll think about at some point over the course of the week.

I slept well, didn’t want to get up this morning (nothing new there), and feel pretty good this morning. I feel rested and relaxed; the question is how will I feel at the end of today and how will I feel when Friday rolls around again? I watched some more episodes of My Adventures with Superman, which is a super-sweet show that manages to capture the essence of who Superman is far more so than any of the recent films. I also finished watching The History of Sitcoms while I was cleaning the living room yesterday–even the floors and ceiling fans, so you can see that I went all out on the deep cleaning. Now all I have left is the staircase and the upstairs, which is probably what I’ll end up doing on Saturday.

Such an exciting life I lead, no?

I’ll probably try to get back on the writing horse tonight when I get home from work. I am still kind of in shock that I had already written Chapter Five and simply forgotten that I had, which usually happens the other way–“I could have sworn I wrote this already; I swear I remember writing it”–which is a problem mainly because I sometimes convince myself that I did actually write it already. This happens with far greater frequency than the pleasant surprise that “Oh, look, I actually had written this already” is a much more marvelous feeling than “oh, I guess I only thought I’d written this”–there’s really nothing quite like gaslighting yourself, really.

Oh, yay, the heat index today and tomorrow may go as high as 120 degrees. That should feel lovely. I was thinking about picking up the mail today after work–but on the other hand, waiting till tomorrow will hardly be any better, will it? Heavy heaving sigh. I feel like we’ve been running a gauntlet here in New Orleans this summer, and we’re not anywhere near the end yet. Heavy heaving sigh. But at least I feel good this morning, right? No groggy Greggy anywhere near in sight.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again lter.

Say You’ll Stay Until Tomorrow

Sunday morning and we’ve survived yet another day of a heat advisory, which was miserable when I went out to get the mail and some cleaning supplies (I also got grocery store sushi for lunch, don’t you dare judge me). But I wasn’t out in it all the much, and I managed. I slept decently Friday night, woke up a few times, like always, but went to bed and slept in until seven thirty (!) before getting up and getting started on the day. I started doing a thorough cleaning of the laundry room and the kitchen in the morning (I needed more wet Swiffer pads, which was why I had to stop before running errands, and I needed other cleaning supplies as well, too), and rearranged the top of the dresser upstairs so there was room for more books, so I took my copies of the annotated Holmes up there along with some other enormous research books that don’t fit in my bookcases and had taken up residence on top of the microwave–which I then cleaned and moved the cookbooks to (because that’s where they belong, goddamnit), which pleased me inordinately. I miss Paul, of course, but the plan to keep myself busy so as to not get lonely seems to be working out so far.

Yesterday, I cleaned.

I even moved furniture and rearranged my workspace. I also discovered that I’d bought one of those Apple speaker things I can stream Spotify through, so I can have music playing while I do things–so no risk of being detoured by television or going down Youtube wormholes. I did baseboards, Constant Reader. I really need to get some Venetian blinds for this window over my desk, much as I loathe giving in finally to the loss of the crepe myrtles. The LSU blanket I tacked up in a rather pointless display of spite and vengeance that had absolutely no effect on anything other than to further enhance the “college apartment” essence we’ve apparently been going for these last few years needs to come down. I’m a grown-up, after all, and the days of using blankets for shades should have been gone years ago.

Talk about arrested development! And as usual, the only person affected by my spite is me, as always.

But it felt good to clean everything, to pick up the rugs and beat them outside, to actually sweep the floors beneath and then wash them before putting back the rugs; moving furniture to anchor the ones more prone to moving, wiping every surface down and even getting some work done in the living room, too, which was marvelous. I also discovered that I had already written a draft of the fifth chapter–I didn’t remember getting past Chapter Four (although I thought I’d already figured it out just not written it–pleasant surprise!). Also, after putting the new drafts of chapters three of four in the three ring binder for the book (because I do this for every book), I found a note scribbled on the last page of Chapter Four–something I had noticed when I was revising it, but didn’t think was a big deal–and now I need to go back and fix it. It’s minor, not a big deal, but if I don’t catch it and fix it now…I may not and whoops! Today I am going to work on the living room some and try to get some writing done. I want to revise Chapter Five, maybe finish this next draft of a short story, and maybe finish writing the first draft of another. I also need to sit down and plot out another one.

I may clean the ceiling fans. Madness. I also need to get lightbulbs, or find the ones we already have.

I also stretched yesterday and used the the back massage roller thingee, which felt great–as did the stretching. I need to stretch more regularly; seriously. It only takes about five minutes, feels great, and always gives me a jolt of energy whenever I do it. And it’s good for me and a healthy thing to do, so why do I never think about doing it? Or why do I think about it and then just shrug it off? Perhaps someday I will understand, but it’s doubtful at this point.

I slept really well again last night, waking up relatively early this morning, which is good as I plan on having a productive day. This morning I plan to do some more cleaning, read some more, and then write all afternoon if possible. My coffee is definitely hitting the spot this morning and tasting marvelous, and here’s hoping this motivation carries through the day, shall we?

I did finish watching The History of Sitcoms last night, which I did enjoy somewhat, I could probably write an entire entry dissecting the episode about class, and the success CBS had in the 1960’s essentially stereotyping the South and Southern people with shows like The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, and Petticoat Junction, among others. But the first two shows (I watched Petticoat Junction growing up, but don’t remember anything about it; the other two I remember very clearly) were actually a lot more clever that critics of the time thought–they were dismissed as very lowbrow humor, but they said a lot about class and were also kind of stinging indictments of American capitalism, mythology, and the class strictures we faced as a nation. (It was interesting that these shows about rural Southern people never address race; Granny on The Beverly Hillbillies still believed the Civil War was still on-going–she was in denial about the loss, I guess; which is certainly problematic when seen through a more evolved and modern perspective.)

I plan on finishing the downstairs today–which means the ceiling fans, or at least trying to get them cleaned; I can only reach so far with my ladder (I should have bought a six foot instead of a five foot all those years ago) but I think I can reach the blades of the fans…or at least I can change out the lightbulbs that are blown out. Then I can spend the rest of this week keeping the downstairs under control as I start working on the upstairs.

I also read two more chilling Alfred Hitchcock Presents tales, this time from Stories That Scared Even Me, “Men Without Bones” by Gerald Kersh and “Not With a Bang” by Damon Knight. I enjoyed both stories, despite having no clue about either author (these old anthologies do not include author biographies in the back, which is a rather disappointing oversight). Kersh apparently wrote the book Night and the City and lots of short stories; Harlan Ellison considered him one of his favorite writers, and “Men Without Bones” was certainly a chilling story, about a man who boards a banana boat hoping desperately for passage back to the United States, who then tells of a chilling voyage deep into the jungle to look for proof of alien visitation years ago when mankind was still in its infancy (which was a very popular trope when I was a kid; Erich von Däniken’s work was selling hundreds of thousands of copies in multiple languages); there is a very dark twist at the end of the already dark story that was rather jolting. Damon Knight was a very popular science fiction writer of the post-war period; I’ve not heard of any of his novels (he was named a Grand Master by SFWA, which he helped found; he was also very prolific as a short story writer, and he wrote the story “To Serve Man,” which became one of the more famous episodes of the original Twilight Zone. One of the things I am enjoying most about reading these old anthologies is learning about great writers of the past who may not be as well-known today as they were in their time; it sometimes makes me wonder if forty years from now some gay mystery writer could be reading old anthologies from this time and discover me? “Not With a Bang” is a post-apocalyptic story about the last two humans left alive–a man and a woman–but the woman’s experiences and what she witnessed as the world came to an end has kind of fried her brain; she cannot really process what happened and it sent her back to a rather prim-like mental state from earlier in her life; she refuses to have sex with the only man left alive unless they are married–but they cannot be married as there’s no one left alive to perform the ceremony. It’s never very clear if the man is so anxious to fuck her because he wants to repopulate the world or if its sexual anxiety and frustration; but he’s not a very good person and he also has caught the post-nuclear plague that wiped out everything the bombs and the fallout didn’t get; one of the symptoms is essentially losing the ability to move or speak and falling into a coma-like state that can be reversed with medication he has stockpiled…but once she has agreed to marry him and we realize that he’s not just frustrated with her–he’s not a good person and he plans to abuse her and be dreadful to her…and chillingly thinks and she could have a daughter…before he goes into a bathroom and freezes into the coma…with the door shut behind him and he’s lost the ability to speak.

These old macabre tales with their eerie twists at the end are probably–I am seeing now–the biggest influences I ever had with my short story writing. I still try to end my stories with a surprising twist, and that has everything to do with reading these anthologies when I was a teenager, watching Night Gallery and reruns of The Twilight Zone (as well as the reboot in the 1980s, which aired one of my favorite episodes of television of all time; a teleplay based on Harlan Ellison’s brilliant story–one of my favorites of all time–“Paladin of the Lost Hour”); these were the same influences Stephen King counts. I also read the horror/suspense comics a lot as a kid, House of Secrets, House of Mystery, Tales from the Crypt and The Witching Hour, among others; there were also little digests for Ripley’s Believe It or Not and other macabre comic tales. Apparently, you’re never too old to remember influences or learn more about yourself.

And on that note, I am going to go spend some more time with Kelly J. Ford’s marvelous The Hunt, and I will check in with you again later, Constant Reader. Have a lovely Sunday!

Way Down

Saturday in the Lost Apartment, and I am feeling relaxed and good. I had a nice day yesterday, the apartment got more work done on it, and I managed to get everything done that needed doing yesterday. I didn’t really write much last night, but I did read some marvelously macabre short stories, which was lovely, and then watched a few episodes of a CNN documentary series, The History of Sitcoms, which is interesting enough, and feeds into that nostalgia thing we are so prone to as a society. I’ve witnessed any number of nostalgia booms throughout the course of my many years on this speck of dust under the fingernails of God we call earth, and while I am not entirely immune to the appeal of nostalgia, I also recognize that we inevitably remember those past times fondly and perhaps not as accurately as we may think. The 1950’s nostalgia boom of the 1970s, for example, spawned American Graffiti and Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley and eventually Grease; reignited interest in the music of the time (anyone remember Sha Na Na?); as well as sock hops and poodle skirts and “Ch**ese fire drills”* (which is probably racist, isn’t it?) and all that stuff; like Archie comics were documentaries rather than fictions. But the 1950s weren’t this idyllic time of peace and quiet and prosperity people seem to think it was, brainwashed by decades of sitcom reruns of shows that presented the United States back to itself as a fantasy, a fiction, and created an unrealistic vision and interpretation of what perfection and success were in a land of opportunity–an unrealistic vision that has somehow come to be taken as a reality when it was never anything more than a fantasy. That’s the danger of nostalgia.

It’s not that I oppose nostalgia, or don’t understand it–we always tend to idealize our childhoods, and the time period when we were children. It isn’t that it was actually an easier, simpler time, it’s just that when you’re a child you aren’t worried about or concerned with the things adults are contending with–so you don’t remember those parts. I do remember being a child, with rioting going on and protests and police violence; I remember the murders of RFK, Dr. King, and Malcolm X. I remember the struggle over the Vietnam War. I remember Watergate, and all the scandals of the Reagan administration modern Republicans have completely forgotten about (or if they do remember them, they remember them as “evil liberals conspiring to bring down St. Ronald–who they would calla RINO today. I can’t imagine Reagan being fond of DeSantis, Ted Cruz, or Marco Rubio; but who knows? They remember the 1980s as their ‘golden age,’ so who knows what Reagan would be like today–although I can’t imagine him sucking up to Putin). For me, the 1980’s was about HIV/AIDS and the struggle to come to terms with myself and who I am. The 1980’s also showed me that homophobes literally wanted all queer people to die…and I do not believe the modern day iteration of them is any different than they were thirty or forty years ago. Their messaging is the same, after all–we must save our children from groomers and pedophiles while actually ignoring who the actual grooming pedophiles are–youth ministers, priests, and pastors of their religious faith.

Nostalgia can be incredibly dangerous. Here’s the question I’d like to ask everyone who longs to go back to that “simpler” time of the 1950’s/1960’s: where were all the black people in Mayberry, NORTH CAROLINA? Are we supposed to believe that a small town in the South was entirely white?

Bitch, please.

As I said earlier, I did spend some time last evening reading short stories from my Alfred Hitchcock Presents anthologies. “A Death in the Family” by Miriam Allen deFord was quite macabre and interesting, about a lonely mortician who grew up as a foster child with no family who creates his own, only to be tripped up in his macabre game when a dead kidnapping victim is dumped on the front steps of his mortuary. Very tightly written and composed, I also like the clever way deFord set the story up to deceive the reader until there’s a big reveal. This story was in Stories That Scared Even Me, and I enjoyed it. I also read some more stories in My Favorites in Suspense: “My Unfair Lady” by Guy Cullingford; “New Murders for Old” by Carter Dickson; and “Terrified” by C. B. Gilford. Carter Dickson was a pseudonym for John Dickson Carr, a very prolific and popular crime writer of the mid-twentieth century; I’d seen books by either name on the racks when I was a kid but I’d never read any of his work. I really liked “New Murders for Old,” a clever story about murder for gain with a complicated twist that I greatly enjoyed–but wouldn’t work in the modern day because it was dependent on someone traveling being out of touch with the rest of his world back home. “Terrified” is a chilling tale of the aftermath of a car accident, where the survivors in one car can’t decide whether or not to kill the dying victim who can counter their testimony about who was at fault, and “My Unfair Lady” is a chilling tale of a sociopathic child who witnesses a murder, and whether she will clear the name of the innocent man who found the body and is the leading suspect, a bit reminiscent of The Bad Seed, which of course is a suspense classic.

I didn’t do as much cleaning and organizing as I had hoped to do, but I did launder all the bed linens and finished the dishes. The kitchen still needs some work done on it, which I think I’ll most likely do this morning once I get this finished and posted. I plan on writing and reading and cleaning for most of the day, but I do have to run an errand later this morning–my copy of Angel Luis Colon’s new juvenile horror novel, Infested, was delivered yesterday, and I also need to determine whether or not I need to stop and make groceries as well. I am low on a couple of things, but I don’t think I actually need a whole lot of anything. I have been enjoying yellow-meat watermelons lately; a relic of my childhood summers in rural Alabama that I’ve never really seen out of that context or anywhere else. Rouse’s sells them now–personal sized and seedless–but it’s been my experience that the personal-sized seedless watermelons don’t taste as good as regular watermelons and have very little flavor of any kind. The last time we went to Costco (we need to go again once Paul gets home) we’d bought two of the personal-sized seedless red ones; they come in a net bag in pairs. Those watermelons were two of the best I’d had in I don’t know how long, so this week I took the plunge and bought one of the yellow ones this week. Constant Reader, it was delicious, if not the best watermelon I’ve had in years. I finished it off last night, but had bought another the other day. So, I think one of my chores for this morning is to clean out the kitchen cupboards, and throwing shit away so I can determine what exactly I need and if I do, in fact, need to stop at the grocery store when I go get the mail.

I also binged the second season of Heartstopper, which was absolutely delightful and charming, as I expected, even as it entered the darker territory the books dealt with. It’s still incredibly sweet, and it handles the darker turns much better than I could have hoped; the books certainly did, even as the darker material made you love and root for the characters more, it’s still a bit heartbreaking because I love those kids so much (Nick, Charlie, Tara, Darcy, Elle, Tao, and Isaac) that I want to wrap them up and protect them from the world. As I watch, I sometimes wonder what it would have been like to see a show like Heartstopper when I was a teenager…at what an incredible difference something like this could have made in my life, which is why shows like this are so fucking important. I just hate that they only give us eight short episodes per season–and yes, Olivia Colman is back as Nick’s mom. (One change from the books to the show I don’t like–while I understand it–was the elimination of Charlie and Tori’s younger brother. Sure, he’s not necessary, as the show proves, but I think the way he reacts to Charlie and Nick, and how much he loves them, would be kind of lovely, if not needed.)

I also thought about the book some, as well as reading all those short stories have helped give me some ideas about my own short stories in progress, and how to fix and finish some of them. I would love to get two chapters of the book written this weekend and to finish two short stories, but I don’t know. I’ll probably wind up feeling lazy and spending more time reading than I should, and of course, I have the new iteration of Real Housewives of New York to finish, as well as the third season of Superman and Lois, and My Adventures with Superman, but I am going to try to put off watching television until weeknights, when I am tired from being at work.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. I need another cup of coffee, and I should put the clean dishes away. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back at some point!

**It is racist: I checked on wikipedia: “Public use of the phrase has been considered to be offensive and racist. In 2017 a candidate for office in Nova Scotia, Matt Whitman, apologized for using the term in a video and subsequently removed the video.[10] In 2020, Washington state Senator Patty Kuderer made an apology for using the term in a hearing; Linda Yang of Washington Asians for Equality stated that the term was racist and filed a complaint with the state.[11] Kuderer apologized before any formal complaint was filed.” There’s an entire history of how the term began and how it was used, but I have found if a term or a phrase that’s a part of the popular culture references a group of people or an ethnicity or a race, it’s usually not a good thing; in this case, it means something useless–and let’s face it, everyone getting out of the car and running around it while stopped at a red light is pretty stupid and useless.

Cico Buff

Saturday morning in the Lost Apartment and it’s a somber bit of a morning here. I’m still sad and a little in shock that Scooter declined so quickly, but in retrospect I am glad it was fast and he didn’t suffer for long. Skittle’s slow decline into death lasted months, which was terrible and heart-wrenching and soul-shattering. I decided that I am going to take the weekend off–no social media, no emails, no nothing. I am going to, of course, write blog posts–I will always try to write blog posts–but I am going to clean and organize and read and think and watch movies and television shows and so forth. This hasn’t exactly been my favorite year so far–how can a year in which you lose your mom and cat in less than half a year be a favorite of any kind–but it’s not been an entirely bad year, either. My life has always gifted me lovely wonderful things while at the same time gut-punching me with something awful; the other night when I realized i was caught up and/or ahead of most everything, I also thought which means something bad is going to happen–which is terrible, but I am always waiting for the other shoe to drop, especially when good things happen to me.

I got some more Alfred Hitchcock Presents anthologies in the mail yesterday (Stories That Scared Even Me, Stories for Late at Night, and Stories Not for the Nervous), and I think it’s time to dial back on buying them, at least until I start getting most of them read. But to take my mind off my sadness I think I need to read a novel, so after I get the kitchen cleaned and organized a little better, I think I’ll probably curl up with Beware the Woman by Megan Abbott at long last, and spend the weekend with her. I think spending a nice, relaxing weekend is just what the doctor ordered, and you know, it’s long past time I did a really thorough clean of this place, and it shows. The condition of the apartment has deteriorated (primarily due to my laziness coupled with a general exhaustion I’ve felt the last few years) to the point that I hope there’s no afterlife; because if my mom can look down from heaven and see how slovenly I’ve kept house for so long…yeah, she’d be haunting me for sure. Several years ago I did finally realize that I am super-hard on my housekeeping skills because Mom was über clean; her house was always spotless and everything was where it went. Messes never lasted for more than five minutes in my mother’s house. She’d finish cooking and there wouldn’t be any mess left behind; something I’ve only managed a few times throughout my life…and yet it always felt marvelous when I was able to pull that off.

I also just realized/remembered that our anniversary is this coming week; the 20th, to be exact, will mark twenty-eight years of the Greg-Paul relationship. Twenty-eight years. I never dreamed that I’d ever find someone compatible to me, let alone have a relationship that would last almost three decades (if we can survive another two, we’ll make it to thirty), but I suppose I can do an “ode to Paul” on our anniversary, so I’ll table this talk for now. I do need to get him a gift; and I know exactly what to get him; I just have to remember to order it today so it may arrive in time…if it doesn’t, no big deal. We’ve both become rather lackadaisical about anniversaries, birthdays, and holidays at this point. They just are, and being together and still happy is the real gift.

Yesterday after I got home from the Cat Practice, I watched a true crime documentary that was interesting from a domestic suspense perspective; it was one of those “I didn’t know I was married to a predator” stories that I’ve always kind of wanted to do from a gay male perspective; lots of things to unpack, discuss, and talk about there. After the documentary, I put on the final game of the College World Series so I could watch LSU win it all yet again–mostly for background noise, really, while I waited for Paul to get home. After that, I was scrolling through Prime looking for something light and funny to take me out of myself, and wound up watching The Beverly Hillbillies, which is silly and fun and funny–still funny–but was so hated by critics and reviewers, despite resonating with viewers and being a Top Ten hit show its entire run. I never understood it myself, and remembered watching when I was a kid. My memories of the show airing weren’t strong, and so it was easy for me to go along with the mentality that it was low humor and tacky and clichéd and bad. I started watching reruns at some point as an adult, and was startled to see how misunderstood the show was; I may have to write about it sometime because it struck me as a particularly biting social satire on American culture and society. And it’s still funny; and the Clampetts are never the butt of the joke; the joke is always on the “city folk.” (Even while grieving, I still think about writing.)

I also listened to The Drowning Tree while doing my data entry; it’s really quite marvelous. But then Paul called with the news from the Cat Practice and that was that for the day. I’ll have to use some paid-time-off to make up for the afternoon hours I lost to handling the Scooter situation.

And on that note, I think I am going to go ahead and head into the relaxation zone rather than the usual spice-mines. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and if you have a pet, give them a big hug for me.